March of farm workers from Linnell Labor Camp to Visalia in protest against rents being raised by the Housing Authority. Nearly 350 people participated
The Tulare Labor Camps rent strike was a strike by tenants of the Woodville and Linnell farm labor camps in 1965 against rent increases by the Tulare County Housing Authority and the inhabitable conditions of the tin houses they lived in.
The strikers consisted of the agricultural workers, headed by the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) alongside support by numerous civil rights and student organizations. It lasted three years and successfully stopped the proposed rent increase, and led to the construction of new houses to replace the tin huts.
It also bolstered the membership and organizing of NFWA, and would feed into the organizing behind the Delano grape strike and play a role in helping to publicize it.
One of the primary factors of the rent strike was the inhospitable living conditions for farm workers. In 1938 the Farm Security Administration built 440 one roomed tin shacks for farm workers in the Woodville and Linnell farm labor camps. All had tin roofs and either tin or wood siding.[1]
They were provided initially without charge to farm workers in 1938 by the FSA and the shacks were only planned to be used for 10 years.[1][2] The housing was then leased to a Growers Association in 1948 for $1[b] for the whole camp, who then charged rents as high as $5[c] a week for each shelter for two years.[3] In 1950 the shacks were passed to the Tulare County Housing Authority, who continued to charge rent.[1][2]
Jim Drake and Gilbert Padilla ending up visiting the camps in 1963 to distribute free contraceptives.[4] During this they saw the inhabitable conditions of the shacks. Padilla noted, “I was shocked to see those little shacks, those tin shacks…. It was a disgrace to have those people in those labor camps. Especially in those little tin shacks.”[5]
By 1964 rents for the shacks ranged from $18.50 for the first cabin, and $5 additional cost for each extra cabin, up to $38[d] a month.[5][1][6] A max of 4 residents were allowed for each cabin. With some families having 8, 10, 12 children.[6]
On March 30, 1965 the Tulare County Authority announced a scheduled rent increase up to a 47% to go in effect in June, precipitating the rent strike.[5][1][6] The rent for he first cabin would've increased to $25[e] for the first cabin and $10[f] for each additional cabin.[6]
Following the announcement, Padilla stood on top of a car at the Woodville Farm Labor camp and convinced 300 tenants to rent strike in June, when the rent increase would go into effect.[5]
In addition to cancelling the rent increase, improving the conditions of the housing was a crucial demand of the strikers. The previously described shacks had no solid doors or windows, and no indoor plumbing or sewage.[6]
For access to water, it had to be carried in five gallon jugs from shared fire hydrants that served 6-7 huts. In addition bathing and toilet facilities were communal, with one toilet house for each 60 units of housing.[6] The showers were also in operation during part of the day, and shut down at 9:30pm every day.[5]
The temperature inside the shacks also became inhospitable during the day. By about eight o'clock in the morning residents had to leave the shack. As a result the tenants had to cook their lunch before then at dawn, when they still had access and couldn't cook dinner until 7:30 to 8:00 pm once the shacks had cooled down enough.[6] Families would often place old wet blankets and mattresses on top of the shacks in an attempt to keep them cool.[5]
"The weather is about a 100° outside and it's about 130° or 150° inside. We can't stay inside."
Gary Bellow, a lawyer and activist who often represented farmworkers from the NFWA, in a 1999 oral history interview described their experience visiting the labor camps:
"You could always tell a kid that grew up in Linnell/Woodville because they had these open gas heaters and every kid that ever grew up in Linnell/Woodville had scars on their arms from falling against these open gas heaters. And, it needed -- we needed better housing."
The labor camps also lacked sidewalks, causing deep mud during rainfall, making it difficult to access the fire hydrants for water.[6] This aspect is of note, as it played role in inspiring the flood in the ending of The Grapes of Wrath, after the 1938 flood in Tulare County.[8] Both farm labor camps were the kind John Steinbeck had modeled their setting off.[8][7] A survey of the Woodville hut found 51 out of 55 huts had holes in the roof, walls or both.[9]
Reverend Jim Drake would also discover that the camp's were only built to last ten years and that they had been condemned by the Tulare County Health and Building Departments. Gilbert Padilla, Jim Drake and David Havens would then get legal advice from James Herndon. He advised them to have tenants pay into an escrow account instead of paying directly to TCHA, in order to prevent eviction.[5]
The Tulare Housing Authority responded to residents, claiming that the rent raises were needed to fix the camps. While the residents replied that over the last 10 years, the housing commission a non profit by law, had made an excess profit of $130,000 [g] and that the camp didn't need to be fixed, it needed to be completely rebuilt.[6]
On May 21, before the official withholding of rent by residents, 125 people attended the monthly meeting of the Tulare County Housing Authority to protest the proposed rent increase. Showing up before the meeting started with protest signs and picketing outside the meeting place, and then went inside when it started.[10][11][12]
Chairman R.D. Dewhirst of the Housing authority, would place blame on the tenants, saying if they had been working instead of attending the meeting they would be making more money then the rent increase at the housing camps would cost them.[10] Gilbert Padilla, would demand for the camp to be turned over to the renters, as Ferris R. Sherman, Executive Director of the Housing Authority, once claimed the renters could have the camps. Dewhirst claimed in response that it wasn't serious.[10] Jim Drake accused the directors of enabling inhabitable housing to continue in the county by attempting to make it legally acceptable to raise rent in substandard housing.[10]
Starting on the 1st of June, the day of the scheduled rent increase, 500 to 600 farm workers went on rent strike. They stopped paying rent to the housing authority and instead deposited their rent at the old rate into a local Bank of America account. The strike was organized by the National Farm Workers Association[h] alongside the California Migrant Ministry.[6] Principally Gilbert Padilla of the NFWA and Jim Drake of the Migrant Ministry.[1]
On July 16 the tenants organized a six mile march from Linnell to Visalia to bring attention to their conditions.[1] A nun led at the front of the march in a white tunic.[6][13][i]
Chris Hartmire of the California Migrant Ministry would be the one who had initially proposed the march, having marched in Selma 3 months earlier.[15][11] In addition members of CORE's LA chapter, SNCC, Citizens for Farm Labor, the Welfare Rights Organization of Oakland, Student Committee for Agricultural Labor, and the California Migrant Ministry all had participants in the march.[11] Those in the NFWA broadly viewed much of their struggle as foundationally intertwined with the civil rights struggle by Black Americans, as such cross-pollination between each movement was common.[11]
The rent strikers had several proposals for the labor camp following the start of the strike. Including suggesting running the camp on a collective basis through a tenant council. In addition they demanded the complete investigation of the financial procedure and camp's financial accounts.[6]
Two farm workers in the Linnell Labor Camp discuss conditions with SNCC field secretary.Page spread from El Malcriado, the unofficial NFWA paper, with a call to action to it's readers to help publicize the strike.
The marchers, consisting of tenants and supporters, were headed towards the regularly scheduled meeting place of the Tulare County Housing Authority. Once they arrived at the offices, they were told the meeting was not being held today, because not enough member's of the housing authority were present.[6]
Then the march continued to the Visalia Presbyterian Church, where the workers held a rally where Labor Journalist Paul Jacobs spoke in support of the rent strike, and a petition was signed by the strikers. The petition read as follows:[6][5]
"Residents of Woodville and Linnell who marched six miles to meet the Tulare Housing Authority and who were ignored, ask the Tulare County Board of Supervisors to intervene and ask them to lower the rent in the substandard housing that they own and operate."
After this they continued to the Tulare County Courthouse where they submitted the petition. On the event Padilla noted in retrospect, "[this] was one of the first marches of Chicano farmworkers."[5]
Excerpt from El Malcriado criticizing the Tulare County Housing Authority Director
In a letter written by Gilbert Padilla -intended as template of the basic events for those to send complaints to California Gov Edmund G. Brown- would criticize the Linnell Farm Labor camp manager claiming:[9]
"[the camp manager had] handed out [pamphets] while working for the Authority, which attack the United Nations, the President of the United States, the National Council of Churches, and 'Martin Luther King and His Civil Rights Urinators.' The fact that the Housing Authority employs a man with such segregationistic and anti-American ideas symbolizes the degree of corruption found in the Tulare County Housing Authority."
On August 14, 1965 it was announced that the Assembly Industrial Relations Committee would investigate the rent strikes at the farm labor camps. Chairman, Mervyn M. Dymally said of the issue:[16]
"The fact that this county housing authority raised rents for these tin shack homes of the poorest people in our abundently rich San Joaquin Valley, in the face of a reserve fund surplus of more than $130,000, and refuses to discuss or negotiate the issues involved with the tenants raises a reaI question about local housing authority operations"
On August 19, the Tulare County Farmers Association called for Tulare Housing Authority to take immediate steps to replace the metal hut housing with more habitable conditions.[17] Public pressure and the rent strike had also led Sherman, of the housing authority and the rent strikers to sit down and discuss, with two people from the state government to mediate. No significant progress was made.[3][18]
That same month, the County Health and Building inspectors investigated the camps and determined they were not fit for human habitation, officially condemning the shacks, and the operation to be illegal. Ferris Sherman and Earl Rouse, heads of the Housing Authority still attempted to evict the protestors through the courts.[19][3][18] The inspectors found 51 building and health violations.[3] However in September, Judge Paul Eymen of the Tulare County Superior Court ruled in favor of the tenants, ruling no rent increase or eviction was justified and that the housing authority had to repair or replace the housing within six months.[11][19]
Excerpt from September 1965 Farm Labor Vol. 3, No. 4 Magazine Issue.
The tenants were represented by tenants Manuel Ponce, John Delgado and Daniel Delgado. With lawyers James Herndon and Carlos LaRoche defending them in court. The tenants agreed tentatively to pay back rent, at the $18 old rent (and $5 for each additional cabin), from the escrow account, the Tenants' Trust Fund, which it had been being paid into during the strike.[19]
The rent strike had ended up costing the Tulare County Housing Authority over $7,000 (equivalent to $67,679in 2023) up to this point.[19]
Tenants also stated, that if the conditions didn't improve, the strike would shortly resume. Additionally the County Board of Supervisors specifically set the six month deadline for a plan or start on building better housing, with criminal negligence charges also being considered.[19]
The rent strikers, in the face of no improvements, did not pay the back rent until later in March of 1968 when a final settlement was reached.[12]
Gilbert Padilla's call to action template letter to the governor
On December 2, 1965 a hearing was held in the Visalia Courthouse discussing the conditions in the camp.[20]
Tenant leaders, Ernesto Loredo and Pablo Espinoza
By 1966, $1.2 million dollars would be given to the TCHA by the federal government to construct livable housing. Half of which was given and the other half being lent with an expectation of repayment.[5]
Following concerns of the condemned huts being torn down, leaving the tenants no where to live, the board members expanded the grace period three more months from when it was set to expire on July 1, 1967. Thus preventing the Tulare County Housing Authority's planned eviction. 200 new dwellings would be set to replace the huts, with the project contract to be awarded on September 25. In addition tenants had concerns about the planned monthly rent for the new buildings, $60[j] a month which they would be unable to pay.[21]
On March, 1968 the rent strike had officially concluded, with a final agreement reached:[12]
1. No striker will be discriminated against in the new housing.
2. The old housing will stand until the families can move into the new project.
3. None of the back rent increase will be paid by those who were on strike.
4. The new rent will be $20 per month, lowering the rent for even the tenants who were not on strike.
5. There will be no evictions even though the Authority has the legal right to evict the strikers.
This agreement reversed the proposed new rent of $60 for the new units, instead to be set at $20 a month. Ernesto Loredo, leader for the last two years of the rent strike, noted:[12]
"They had us beaten several times, but because the people were tough we were able to force the hand of the Authority. We have shown them that farm workers are not weak just because we are poor. When we stick together for a single goal, we have a power equal to any."
The rent strike successfully reversed the proposed rent increases and led to the construction of permanent habitable houses.[5][22] The organizing established from the strike remained and tenants continued to challenge the housing authority when rent raises and fees they felt were unjust were attempted, including in 1971, 1974 and 1985.[5]
The strike played an important role in catalyzing farm worker families within the camps becoming a core of NFWA support and involvement.[11] Gary Bellow, a lawyer who provided legal advice with the rent strike case, noted:[7]
"And many of them joined the Union after that because they liked the experience of collective action, they saw what it could do with each other."
—Gary Bellow
Cesar Chavez would also later describe the effect of the rent strike:[11]
Short of getting into an agricultural strike, the rent strike, which lasted through the summer, was one of the best ways of educating farm workers that there was a union concerned with their economic interests. It was one of the first demonstrations where the black eagle flew.
—Cesar Chavez
In August of 1965, while the rent strike was still ongoing, the roots of the grape strike begun, at Rancho Blanco. Many who had participated in the rent strike would come to support or participate in the labor strike.[22]
Cesario Estrada Chavez was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta and lesser known Gilbert Padilla, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Ideologically, his worldview combined left-wing politics with Catholic social teachings.
The United Farm Workers of America, or more commonly just United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and Gilbert Padilla and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by organizer Larry Itliong. They allied and transformed from workers' rights organizations into a union as a result of a series of strikes in 1965, when the Filipino-American and Mexican-American farmworkers of the AWOC in Delano, California, initiated a grape strike, and the NFWA went on strike in support. As a result of the commonality in goals and methods, the NFWA and the AWOC formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966. This organization was accepted into the AFL–CIO in 1972 and changed its name to the United Farm Workers Union.
The Bracero Program was a U.S. Government-sponsored program that imported Mexican farm and railroad workers into the United States between the years 1942 and 1964.
A rent strike, sometimes known as a tenants strike or a renters strike, is a method of protest commonly employed against large landlords. In a rent strike, a group of tenants agree to collectively withhold paying some or all of their rent to their landlords en masse until demands are met. This can be a useful tactic of final resort for use against intransigent landlords, but can carry risks for the tenants, such as eviction, lowered credit scores, and legal consequences.
Philip Villamin Vera Cruz was a Filipino American labor leader and farmworker. He helped found the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), which later merged with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). As the union's long-time second vice president, he worked to improve the working conditions of migrant workers.
The Delano grape strike was a labor strike organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a predominantly Filipino and AFL-CIO-sponsored labor organization, against table grape growers in Delano, California to fight against the exploitation of farm workers. The strike began on September 8, 1965, and one week later, the predominantly Mexican National Farmworkers Association (NFWA) joined the cause. In August 1966, the AWOC and the NFWA merged to create the United Farm Workers (UFW) Organizing Committee.
Linnell Camp is a census-designated place (CDP) in Tulare County, California. Linnell Camp sits at an elevation of 358 feet (109 m). The 2010 United States census reported Linnell Camp's population was 849.
The California agricultural strikes of 1933 were a series of strikes by mostly Mexican and Filipino agricultural workers throughout the San Joaquin Valley. More than 47,500 workers were involved in the wave of approximately 30 strikes from 1931 to 1941. Twenty-four of the strikes, involving 37,500 union members, were led by the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union (CAWIU). The strikes are grouped together because most of them were organized by the CAWIU. Strike actions began in August among cherry, grape, peach, pear, sugar beet, and tomato workers, and culminated in a number of strikes against cotton growers in the San Joaquin Valley in October. The cotton strikes involved the largest number of workers. Sources vary as to numbers involved in the cotton strikes, with some sources claiming 18,000 workers and others just 12,000 workers, 80% of whom were Mexican.
The Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) was a Communist-aligned union active in California in the early 1930s. Organizers provided support to workers in California's fields and canning industry. The Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) dated back to 1929 with the formation of the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL). With industrialization and the advent of the factories, labor started migrating into the urban space. An influx of immigrant workers contributed to the environment favorable to big business by increasing the supply of unskilled labor lost to the urban factories. The demand for labor spurred the growers to look to seasonal migrant workers as a viable labor source. Corporations began to look at profits and started to marginalize its workers by providing sub-par wages and working conditions to their seasonal workers. The formation of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union addressed and represented the civil rights of the migrant workers. Ultimately the CAWIU lost the battle, overwhelmed by the combined alliance of growers and the Mexican and state governments. The eventual abandonment of the Trade Union Unity League led to the dissolution of the CAWIU, which later emerged as the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA).
Jessie Lopez De La Cruz was a Chicano American farm worker, the first female recruiter for the UFW, an organizer and participant in UFW strikes, a community organizer, a working mother, and a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She ran the first UFW Hiring Hall, was an adviser to the California Commission on the Status of Women, and the secretary treasurer of National Land for People. Lopez-De La Cruz is also known for her work banning the short-handled hoe, her work educating fellow farm workers, her work promoting co-op farming, and her commitment to fighting injustice for the working poor.
In 1933 there was a cherry strike in Santa Clara, California. The main overview of the events in Santa Clara was an agricultural strike by cherry pickers against the growers or employers. As the events of the labor strike unfolded, the significance of the strike grew beyond that of the workers themselves into a broader scope within America.
John Kouns was a photographer and social justice activist who played an important role in documenting the United Farm Workers movement and the Civil Rights Movement.
Maria Moreno was an American farmworker and labor organizer. She was the first woman farmworker hired to be a union representative.
El Malcriado was a Chicano/a labor newspaper that ran between 1964 and 1976. It was established by the Chicano labor leader Cesar Chavez as the unofficial newspaper of the United Farm Workers during the Chicano/a Movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. Published in both English and Spanish editions, El Malcriado provided a forum for migrant workers to criticize working conditions and served as a way to organize the collective voice of Mexican American farmworkers. The newspaper's contents ranged from articles on union activities, coverage of labor issues, political commentary, cartoons, satire, and artwork. It is an example of ethnic press or alternative media that developed from political movements and immigrant communities within the United States to challenge existing power structures and gain political leverage.
Gilbert Padilla is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, along with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NWFA), which later became the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). In his position as Chavez's right-hand man, he served as vice president of the NWFA and then secretary-treasurer in the UFW. He helped to build the UFW through organizing union membership drives, boycotts, and strikes. In 1965, Padilla was the center of the rent strike in Tulare County. He and Jim Drake challenged the California state government for a sudden rent hike in labor camps where the buildings were long past their demolition date; it helped garner attention for the grape strike later in the year.
Pat Chambers was an influential labor organizer and Communist Party member in the 1930s in California. He was a key figure in some of the largest California agricultural strikes of 1933. Chambers was the inspiration for the character "Mac" in John Steinbeck's 1936 novel, In Dubious Battle.
The Associated Farmers of California was an influential anti-labor organization in California between 1934 and 1939. Agricultural and business leaders formed the organization to counter growing labor activism in California. The AF was responsible for substantial violence in reaction to agricultural strikes; the creation of anti-picketing ordinances; and spying on the activities of labor organizations. After a US Senate investigation into its actions and the advent of WW2, it lost influence and eventually disbanded. “The reign of the AF would only come to an end when the LaFollette Committee turned its scrutiny towards its activities in 1939 and 1940." The committee's attention short-circuited the AF's attempt to expand across the United States.”
Woodville Farm Labor Camp is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Tulare County, California, United States. It is 8 miles (13 km) west of Porterville and 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Tulare.
Andrew Zermeño is an American cartoonist from Salinas, California. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was the art director and cartoonist for the Chicano/a labor newspaper El Malcriado.
Since October 1, 2024, members of the Kansas City Tenants Union in the cities of Kansas City, Missouri and Independence, Missouri began a rent strike after voted approval and failed negotiations with their landlords and Fannie Mae. Tenants of Independence Towers and Quality Hill Towers, two apartment complexes involved with the dispute, have complained about poor living conditions, with maintenance reports going unaddressed. This is the first rent strike in the area since 1980, and the first ever targeting the federal government of the United States.
↑ García, Matt (2012). From the jaws of victory: the triumph and tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the farm worker movement. Berkeley (Calif.): University of California Press. pp.33, 303. ISBN978-0-520-25930-0.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Garrett, Jimmy; Estrin, Ellen; Cobb, Charlie; Nancy; Turitz, Gene; Glasgow, Myrtle; Minnis, Jack (August 1965). "Tulare County Rent Strike, March"(PDF). The Movement. Independent Voices. Reveal Digital (in en This article incorporates text from this source and which is in the public domain.). 1 (8). Archived from the original on November 13, 2024 – via JSTOR.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
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